Comparing sleep measures of infants derived from parental reports in sleep diaries and acceleration sensors

Abstract

It was confirmed that the sleep measures indicating sleep schedule reported from the sleep diaries had high concordances compared with the data from the actigraphs. Using the sleep diary was recommended to understand behaviours when focusing on infant's daily rhythms. In terms of accuracy and stability of recording throughout the study period, understanding sleep quality and independence of sleeping places, the choice of actigraph was recommended.

Agreement Between Actigraphy and Diary‐Recorded Measures of Sleep in Children With Epilepsy

“…For actual sleep at night and WASO the discrepancies found in our study were even greater, up to ±1 hr. These findings are consistent with prior studies showing that WASO is among the most difficult sleep parameters to record because parents' memories might be vague or the child might not be a signaler (Asaka & Takada, 2011;Iwasaki et al, 2010;Sadeh, 1996). Discrepancies between actigraphy and diary-derived sleep parameters were largely unrelated to the children's sociodemographic and clinical characteristics in our study.…”

Sleep arrangements, parent–infant sleep during the first year, and family functioning.

“…Actigraphy, however, has been found to be a valid indicator of sleep-wake activity in infants and adults (Galland et al, 2012), and in the present study was more than adequate to detect the expected increase in sleep consolidation in infants across the first year (Henderson et al, 2011). Actigraphy is still generally regarded as superior to maternal report in estimating child sleep-wake activity (Asaka & Takada, 2011; Simard, Bernier, Bélanger, & Carrier, 2013) because mothers tend to under-estimate child waking frequencies and durations (Acebo et al, 2005). We propose that the tendency of mothers in persistent co-sleeping arrangements to report higher frequencies of infant night awakenings may be related to other, family-based and personal factors.…”

Discrepancies in maternal reports of infant sleep vs. actigraphy by mode of feeding

“…Validation studies of self-reports with actigraphy find that parents reliably report infant sleep schedules (e.g. sleep and wake onset), but poorly estimate infant total sleep time, night-wake frequency and duration (Acebo et al, 2005;Asaka and Takada, 2011;Sadeh, 1996;Simard et al, 2013). This has implications for the outcome validity and applicability of many studies that are based solely on parent-report data.…”